The Radio As It Was Yesterday

It was a strange party, this celebration for a radio station, because it did more to evoke the past than punctuate the present.

This, of course, was the way we felt not before or during the recent party celebrating the 65th anniversary of WBBM-AM (its 20th birthday as

``Newsradio 78``), but after the festivities, when we were sitting quietly in Harry Caray`s restaurant-or as quietly as one might be in its cacophonous bar-and thumbing through a handsome book called ``WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today.``

Across the street, in the Nikko Hotel, many of the celebrants were still celebrating. From our window seat at Harry Caray`s, we could see a small but steady stream of tuxedoed gents and bejeweled ladies leaving the hotel, getting in their cars and going home.

A few hours earlier, they had been mingling, over cocktails, and remembering the good old days. The majority of this crowd did not remember such bygone radio shows as ``The Nutty Club,`` ``Music Wagon`` or ``Shopping with the Missus.`` Nor could they pick out of the crowd such famous radio faces as Mal Bellairs, Howard Miller or Jim Conway. Radio personalities, along with most Nobel Prize-winning physicists, are among the most faceless celebrities known to man.

We recognized John Madigan, the man of ``Newsradiossssssssssssssseventy-ei ght.`` His old friends still called him ``Red`` though his hair has long since turned white. He no longer works for the station but he looked happy, smiling.

But, as we said, we were thumbing through this handsome book. It was written by Chuck Schaden, the keeper of the old-radio-days flame as host of WBBM`s ``Radio Classics,`` and beautifully designed by George DiGuido.

It tells the fascinating story of how two youngsters, Les and Ralph Atlass, took a basement hobby and transformed it into one of the nation`s most famous radio stations. The book contains dozens of wonderful illustrations and is currently available in area bookstores, a bargain at $10.

``Nice party, wasn`t it?`` said a man, noticing our book.

He was holding one of the Franklin MacMahon posters that each party guest had been given when they left. It celebrated, in 30-some images, the events and personalities in the life of Newsradio 78.

We offered to buy him a drink. He wanted scotch. I showed him pictures in the book and stopped turning pages at a section that covered a time when WBBM was known as the Showmanship Station.

``This is great. Man, those were the days,`` he said. ``I work for `BBM and I don`t want to sound disloyal but who would you rather hear, Frank Sinatra or Felicia Middlebrooks?``